WASHINGTON—According to widespread reports, roughly 314 million Americans across the country have been left without any power following Tuesday’s devastating presidential election.

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“By our estimates, power is out in roughly 150 million homes throughout the country, and many residents—especially the poor, the middle class, and ethnic minorities—will have no power for a long, long time,” said Cornell University political scientist Dr. Paul Kucharski, adding that the power infrastructure, which was originally put in place in 1789, has become increasingly problematic and unreliable over the past 200 years. “Given that we have an outdated system that is so prone to failure, an outage of this magnitude was inevitable.”

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“I was watching the returns on television, they called a winner in my state, and then I was just totally without power,” said 35-year-old Dalton, GA resident Chris Orloff, adding that the election has left him totally in the dark and with no one to turn to. “Even though we were warned the election was going to happen on Nov. 6, there was just no way to avoid this thing.”

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Though a majority of Americans said the outage has left them scared and helpless, some were angered, arguing that as taxpayers, they deserve access to power. Others remarked they have simply gotten used to the unstable, highly unreliable electoral system and its long history of knocking out power to citizens when they need it most.